Zane Rožkalna

Q: What are the most fulfilling and most challenging aspects of your job?

The best moments are when we can successfully combine free-time activities with learning, such as in a special event we organise every year – Music Theory day – or when youngsters play music for a whole day in an open-air festival that we have been organizing every year for six years. We have enjoyed the process of young musicians and personality development in our Musical Summer camps since 2006.

Last year we even had a national TV broadcast about our school and projects. In such moments this work really feels worthwhile.

The most fulfilling moments are when children and youngsters realise that they are able to do something in music and are getting better at playing music even if someone before has told them they lack talent for music (singing or playing an instrument).

For us, it is important that youngsters feel that this place – Rockschool and NGO – is supportive, open to different personalities, inclusive and can be a second home for them.

The challenging aspects are overcoming students’ stereotypes that music is something really difficult and theory is boring. Regular schools in our country do a lot to make music programmes difficult or not really interesting. The priority is to keep interest and motivation alive and find a balance between the mandatory basics in music that every young musician has to learn and the passion for music. Learning is not entertainment but it can be entertaining sometimes.

If the youngster has no actual motivation in the first place, then we have to help them find it or help realise that it might not be their thing (usually in the case of younger children when their parents have decided something instead of them). Also overcoming the moment when the person realises that playing music requires regular practice, must be part of the daily routine and takes patience.

We put a lot of effort into raising young people and it is great to see them growing and becoming creative, wonderful people , but it is also hard to watch them leave, for University, for other countries, or simply growing out of their taste for Rockmusic or being a musician overall. Maybe we do not always receive something in return for the things that we do. I guess that is just how it is for teachers.

It is for me as a leader hard to lead a collective that consists purely of artists-musicians. There is often a “defensive” attitude if we want to start something new or make improvements. People want to stick to their idea of how everything should be taught to their students and different suggestions to them might sound like criticisms of their previous methods or work.

Q: Please describe some examples (things you have personally witnessed) that show how music can contribute to civic engagement among young people. For instance, how through music do young people become more involved in improving their community, or more socially engaged and politically active, or concerned about global challenges?

Our organisation’s mission is to unite society and strengthen personalities through music. It definitely works, as music is our main tool for communication with our target groups and society.

Through music, children and youngsters feel that they belong with our community and with each other. Our organisation has formed a community and it has been a natural process. After youngsters start to feel that they belong, it is easy to cooperate so we can do additional activities and ask them to contribute to wider society – often by playing music. Like last year and also this year, we had and are going to have a mobile outdoor concert for people in hospitals and treatment centres, people with different disadvantages/handicaps etc.

We enjoy being together and working together so we can achieve something – for example, we try to improve the surroundings in our town, etc.

Music and belonging to a musical organisation has motivated Russian minority youngsters to learn the Latvian language, and we have encouraged many to start to speak Latvian. That is one example/means of inclusion.

Inclusion is a long process, but usually if a person decides to be a part of our organisation when he is aged 10-12 and he likes it and stays with us for 4-5 years or more, most likely he will also become a socially responsible, helpful and active person. I can not say if it is a direct impact of music, but it is part of it.

About global changes, this summer we had a music camp for children and youngsters, and we just used solar energy. We lived in a forest. There was limited access to (warm) water and electricity. We talked to youngsters (camp participants), and they accepted it all very well. Also the place (camp-site) after the camp was clean. Youngsters themselves decided to sort garbage and set up different bags for different types of garbage. At the end the music camp was a musical and environmentally friendly event.

Q: Please describe examples from conversations among young people (things you have personally observed) that show some of the different ways they discuss music.

Usually I have a chance to witness conversations about youngsters themselvves playing music or getting to know music theory, not so much about listening to other peoples' music. That is because I am involved in thes music teaching process, and youngsters dicuss their achievements; also they like to discuss different mistakes and misunderstandings after playing a concert or exam. So they are in the music learning process and they like to reflect about it and exchange their experiences with their friends.

Even after they make mistakes on the stage, they are willing to admit it and see the funny side of it, which is a very positive thing, cause that way they will have enough courage for the next concert.

So I witness youngsters discussing music as a part of their life.

Q: Based on what you have seen, how do such conversations change as young people mature (for instance, ages 15-17; 18-20; 21-25)?

Maybe the conversations may change along with the person’s age in cases where he/she studies music or is really interested in music. Then there is a difference in such conversations, because an understanding of music would grow with the person getting older.

People aged 15-17 would notice more what they like about a particular singer/ drummer etc., but people in their early 20s would probably start to understand technical details of music, understand the recording process, different effects, etc.

If about classical music, definitely it takes time to get used to listening to it. It is definitely a discovery when someone finally starts to enjoy listening to Bach.

It will sound different to people in different age groups, and therefore the discussion will also be different. But, it depends also on the person’s musical background not only their age.

Q: Based on your experience, have discussions of music and society among young people generally changed across years due to different historical conditions? If so, how and why?

I think on the one hand it has changed, as nowadays the process and means of listening to music is different compared with 20-30 years ago when a person could listen to music in more limited ways (audio-tapes, CDs, TV, radio). Two to three decades ago a young person could not so easily choose what to listen to: it was a choice dictated by radio or TV programmes, or, if there was enough money, CDs or tapes.

Nowadays one can listen to music anywhere and with almost no exception choose what to listen to. There are other ways how to influence young music listeners’ choices and the music is also more connected with its visual appearance.

Still talking about music and musicians is something that defines a young person, and that is a conversation about what you like and who you are, and that has not changed.

Q: Do you sense that a shared knowledge of traditional (folk) songs and dances is changing among young people, and if so, how and why?

In my childhood it was very popular in Latvia to sing national folk songs and play folk instruments.

It was related to such songs not really being allowed for a long time, and finally there was a chance to get to know the traditions and songs and dances.

It was a great time. These traditions are being carried on by folk-groups, but the majority of children and young people don’t know the basic/ must-know folk-songs, and that is really worrying. They don’t know the most popular Latvian folk-songs that we could sing under the Soviet Union as kids. On the one hand the reason is maybe that there is no longer the tradition of singing in families (for most people). Another reason would be modern Western influences, and thirdly school programmes seem to focus on a very wide range of music aspects and there are not enough music lessons in schools for just singing and getting to know folk-songs. We can not expect that youngsters in regular schools will fully learn music theory (that they probably do not need), but it is a pity if school youngsters can not recognise the most popular Latvian folk-songs.

Q: What is the most interesting story you can share about how music impacts young people?

Today I cannot come up with an interesting story, but I was surprised how it is possible that a student who was not able to sing any note correctly was able to write down a music dictation. Or that someone who was not able to sing at all at the age of 15, could, after 4 years of work, sing a song to a reasonable standard on the stage.

There are such stories (too personal to tell) when someone with no actual talent but just the right teacher and the motivation can become a musician whom people later see as having a natural talent.

Q: In what ways do you see social media impacting how young people use and communicate about music?

It is most likely that the major part of youngsters would listen to a song that also has a video; music probably is or will be an audio-visual experience. But with a freedom of internet accessibility I can observe a lot of youngsters walking on the street or riding a bicycle and listening to something using headphones. So music is also a companion on the road.

Social media formats are getting shorter and more compact; in order to get one’s attention the music and video can not be too long. Ideally someone might fall for the short version and decide to listen to the full one. The success of music on social media platforms might also depend on how popular the person is spreading the idea. If someone highly respected in the youth community would advise listening to some Mozart, it is really possible that youngsters would try that.

Q: What kinds of discussions have you witnessed stimulated through instrumental music? Can you imagine some new ways this could be achieved?

We have used music as a tool for discussion/expressing emotions as part of supervision sessions that we have had in our collective for youth workers and music teachers (also including young people aged 20-25). It was an idea of the young professional who was in charge of the whole supervision process.

Q: What kind of new methods in work with young people would be helpful in your work? What should be the purpose of these methods?

I like everything that is interactive and makes people not only study music but has some added value such as: having a good time, getting to know other people, learning to work in a team, learning to learn, learning to plan your own work/time/tasks, having fun, widening knowledge not only in music (linked to other kinds of knowledge, including technologies).

I like methods that include collaboration and supporting others and that help people believe that they can do it.

I include different game-related methods, as there can never be too many games, even for adults. I include some apps (youngsters like rhythm-training apps, musical hearing apps, sheet-music reading apps (for example, for guitar sheet-music reading, youngsters loved it when we had it in our free-time area in an actual guitar competition). I would like there to be a simple and free access app for sheet-music writing (but maybe it exists already). Everything that has something to do with theory should be made really simple (but that already depends on the teacher!), and step-by-step, a lot of cross-subject methods (like bringing an instrument to a theory class).

It is very important to not only teach how to read sheet-music, but while doing it to develop one’s musical-hearing so that a student actually realises what notes he/she is playing and would be able to play also without being given sheet-music. All the memorizing should be based on knowledge and understanding, not only finger reflexes (there are, of course, methods for that, but personally I as a young person was introduced to them really late, and it should not be that way).

Music itself includes almost everything – starting from being a way of art, including maths, physics, technologies, a wide range of sounds, emotions, physical jobs, rhythms, it encompasses different nationalities, different historical periods, etc. One way of learning about this world could be just studying music, because it can tell almost everything just by itself.

July 2021